


Miscommunication Somewhere

by izumi2



Series: List of Questions (Civil War Team Iron Man) [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Civil War Team Iron Man, Extremis!Tony Stark, Gen, Indifferent Tony Stark, Sarcastic!Rhodey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 05:24:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13381080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izumi2/pseuds/izumi2
Summary: Steve witness Tony in the same fight simulation he used. That made him re-evaluate Siberia all over again.





	Miscommunication Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> The 64 thousand dollar question...

**_ Was Tony trying to kill Barnes in Siberia? _ **

It was a routine assessment. Ever since the Accords were stabilized and most of the amendments were approved and compromise was reached for all sides, assessments of ability (not to mention personality traits) became the norm. As even the veterans trained and improved and new members were added, some sort of organization and division were needed.

Now any time that a new member is added to the active roster and even those in reserve, there is a battery of tests performed to see where he or she will fit better in overall strategies of where they are located.

This was the first time Steve and co were watching the Avengers from the American western shore, based in California, doing it in New York. Something about their Compound being cleared out because of, cough, hazardous substances being spilled in the labs, no one actively stared at Bruce and Hope but they were all thinking it. 

It was also the first time since they came back to US that Steve heard Tony’s voice instead of just seeing the engineer from afar, “My workshop!” the engineer was whining and half draped over Bruce like a glorified cape, who was making pretty good time considering he was literally carrying a man that was both taller and heavier than he is. Tony’s feet were limply dragging through the floor.

“There, there, Tony.” Bruce’s usually distracted voice was replaced by the slightest tinge of guilt.

“Seriously, change the track! You have been crying ‘My workshop!’ for the entire trip.” Rhodes carefully made his way inside, sending everybody a completely deadpan look and a glare towards Steve.

That was not unusual, every time Rhodes was required to coexist with any of the ‘Exvengers’, he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else or remove  ** _them_** somewhere else, which was probably the plain true.

Behind them, Vision, Jennifer, Hope and Carol were staring at their teammates with amused expressions but Hope, like Bruce, had the hint of guilt in hers. A little further behind, Loki was calmly talking with Scott Lang. Also the first time since they came back that Steve was seeing Scott.

The second they landed, he was swarmed away by a battalion of lawyers being led by Jennifer Walters and Matt Murdock. Hope van Dyne and her father impatiently waiting for them in a private jet. Steve sometimes had news from them and Scott once contacted them just to tell he was ‘ok’. But it seems that his parole problems were finally settled. Something about working his sentence off as an Avenger.

“Oh, hey guys, long time no see.” He waved at them a little.

“I was informed by Coulson that you were made aware of the reasons we are here.” Rhodes was polite enough not to interrupt Scott but he was clearly past pleasantries and the way he positioned himself between Steve and co and where Tony was still clinging to Bruce, just enough distance put that they couldn’t hear them, made clear what he thought.

“Uh, yes.”

“Good.” And the colonel headed for the simulation rooms.

“You are welcome to watch, Mr. Rogers.”  The Accords liaison for the western coast Avengers was a young man that was very hard to impress. The fact that he didn’t even stutter when meeting Tony or Steve was heavily taken into account for his position.

Such as now. Most of the team liked to watch the assessment of new teammates and give their own encouragement or have an actual informed opinion when assigning a post for the possible rookie.

Steve swallowed but with a sigh he followed after Vision’s cape. At the corner of his eye, he could see Wanda squirming, clearly wanting to approach Vision but not knowing how with his cool indifference.

Bucky and Clint were right behind him and Steve didn’t know where Nat is most of the time this days but Sam usually made sure to participate in team activities. Sure enough, the former airman was already waiting there.

“OK, Scott, since you have just recently been approved for the Avengers roster, then you know the proceedings but not the settings, Iron Man will show how it’s done and what you can expect. We have already tested your reflexes, intellect, skill with and without the suit, what you bring to the table aside from your tech enhancements. The only thing left is a demonstration of overall abilities.” Jennifer finished while motioning for Tony.

The room was enormous and surrounded by a one way bullet (Hulk, actually) proof glass for better view.

Tony spoke clearly, “Level Assessment, base level.” The images were real enough, the life decoys were top of the art and the scenario was a familiar one, at least for Rhodey, that immediately recognized Hammer/Vanko’s knockoff armors from almost eight years ago. Not surprising since the technology used is based on the B.A.R.F and therefore used your own neural oscillations to project the simulation.

Jennifer was explaining while Tony’s Extremis build the nanotech armor around the engineer, “As you see, the simulation room will use things pulled directly from your memories. They will be situations of danger where your adrenaline went through the roof basically and we will watch how you respond to tension.”

“A psych bait.”

“More or less, but the intention  ** _is_** seeing how you respond to risk, especially something that can be a trigger and compromise you in the middle of a mission.”

Tony was even more efficient than they have ever seen before. It helped that those life decoys weren’t actually alive and so, there was no need to hold back. Just as before, it proved a little too much, especially with Tony being grounded and without Rhodey as backup. And just as before, he used his last, most useful card.

Everybody watching minus Rhodes gawked as Tony spun and lasers cut everything in the room, barely avoiding the glass.

That…that was… what  ** _was_**  that? There were still fifteen robots left, and yet now they were all guillotined, the extremities still red from where they were cut right through as if they were made of wet paper instead of titanium. A little hysterical chuckle echoed and Steve didn’t know where it came from; it could be from him and he still wouldn’t have noticed.

Steve absently noticed that Tony had moved right to the middle of the simulation room before releasing that laser thing, which was probably the only thing that saved the glass, ‘Hulk-proofed’ or not. But his main focus was on the way Tony casually disposed of the… cache? And carefully collected them before checking the time it took him to complete the simulation. A little more than eight minutes, almost nine times shorter than Steve’s best run in the same hardship settings.

Scott was excitedly talking with Jennifer that was answering to the best of her abilities about the room’s interface but she was a lawyer not an engineer. While Scott was no Tony Stark, his tech talk was still out of her range, for God’s sake, she barely manages the TV’s remote.

Rhodes was calmly deleting the data collected for safety purposes with Carol and Vision speaking quietly with him, Hope and Bruce were a little further away but approached when Tony got out.

None of this really registered in Steve’s mind. He was too busy trying to control his breathing, his eyes glued to the decimated LMDs.

The basic settings were relatively easy. Steve himself was already using the upper, harder levels for training purposes, and yet he still took a couple of minutes north of an hour to complete the Assessment Level and he doesn’t leave it unscratched. Sure, it didn’t come very close to tiring him, the Super Soldier Serum made sure of that, the level he used nowadays took him the better part of the day and gave that pleasant sore muscles feeling of a workout. And yet…

His head was in the Siberia confrontation. All this time, for the two years they were in hiding and then even after Thanos’ invasion, Steve insisted that he had to fight back, that he couldn’t let Tony kill Bucky. He snorted and disapproved of the whole charade that was that court day, where Tony was deemed innocent of attempt murder on grounds of innumerous videos footage of Iron Man’s battle sights. They looked like he dropped a nuke on them. Taking out jets, tanks and even keeping up with Thor who in turn could keep up with the Hulk. They decided he was not guilty while condemning Steve and his friends at almost every turn. They all saw the brutality in which Tony attacked them but…

Steve swallowed with some difficult and didn’t even know if he said something to encourage Scott when it was his turn. The whole thing went by while he felt like fainting. Finally. Finally! It was all over and even with Tony making clear that he wanted nothing to do with him, Steve had to do this.

“Tony?”

It was almost funny how everybody froze, even the secretary that was furiously typing in the corner, even the cleaning crew that was moping the floor. It  ** _would_**  be funny, Steve cleared his throat, if it wasn’t for Rhodes and Danvers that tensed instead, almost ready to jump.

“Can I… speak with you?”

But Tony’s blasé attitude won out and he indifferently shrugged, “Sure.”

“Mind if we tag along, Mr. Rogers?” Rhodes motioned to the rest of their team, “I don’t want Tony to go ‘alone and as a friend’. Last time didn’t end so well after all.” Whoever said that Rhodes couldn’t be extremely petty never messed with his best friend. Rhodes didn’t even look towards him but Sam still cringed and turned away.

“It’s… uh, I…it’s a little personal…” Steve finally mumbled.

“Oh, God, don’t tell me you forgot to mention that someone else’s parents were murdered.” Carol was visibly holding back a laugh but she still put a hand in Rhodes’ shoulder that rolled his eyes but relented.

However, the deed was done and the tension in the room skyrocketed. At least for Steve and his team, Tony and the rest of West Coast Avengers (minus Scott that didn’t know if he should stay or run) were biting snickers back.

“…no, I just needed to talk to Tony.”

“Since Tony has already agreed to it, then we have no right to stop you but we do wish to…be present. It doesn’t have to be all of us.” Carol put all her colonel skills to use and Steve bit his lip but nodded.

Rhodes was promptly beside Tony and Carol shook her head a little at the whole situation and followed at a more sedate pace. She could feel Steve’s team burning a hole at their backs but trusted her own team to contain them if necessary.

They chose one of the nearest conferences rooms, soundproof and no tech anywhere to be hacked, there was only a simple lock on the door but the room was so bare that any bugs would be detected in a second.

Rhodes leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms, still in the War Machine armor and none of the other three fooled themselves about the reason, unlike Tony that was in a three piece, then again, Rhodes didn’t have Tony’s version of Extremis to instantly build the suit whenever he willed it. Carol was more relaxed but she was still eyeing Steve like he was a particular small but rabid animal while Tony flopped down in one of the chairs and stared at Rogers expectantly, not paying any mind how the other man was visibly nervous.

A few more minutes of silence and Tony took a quick look at his wrist watch, perhaps he was a little hasty at agreeing to ‘talk’, he had a meeting on the other side of the country in an hour, at this rhythm, he would need to take the armor instead of getting back with others on the Quinjet to make it in time.

His move didn’t go unnoticed by Rhodes that was right to his left, “Look, I understand that you don’t really do anything between missions aside from destroying punching bags, but the rest of us have other responsibilities besides ‘Avenging’.”

Rogers winced, “Right, sorry. I…I wanted to talk about your demonstration today.”

“Yes?”

“That… laser thing?”

“A focused one with limited range,” when Steve didn’t say anything more Tony frowned in confusion, “what of it?”

“Have you… always had it?”

“Since Mark III back in 2010. Why?”

“But is it a…common feature?”

“In most of them, sometimes I have missiles assembled in the shoulder area, they are just as destructive but I use them more for bigger targets. Rogers, now that I am not…curious about the sudden interest, but what is this all about?”

“Were you trying to kill Bucky back in Siberia?” he blurted out and immediately regretted it when Carol and Rhodes tensed even more, now  ** _both_**  looked ready to jump before Tony chuckled. Genuinely chuckled with genuine amusement which baffled everybody.

“Now I get it. I gotta congratulate you, Rogers, first time in literal decades that I didn’t manage to make an educated guess on where the conversation was going two lines in, but then again, after all the times we fought side by side I kinda thought you knew what I was capable of. The answer is: I don’t know.” And the billionaire leaned back.

Steve’s temper flared, “How can you not know?! What kind of answer is that?”

“Easy: not knowing. I was seventeen when my parents died and for twenty five years…I had believed it was an accident, of course there was always the underlining suspicious that everybody around me also had, was Howard drunk? But still…no third party involved.

And suddenly that was not the case anymore, worse yet: my teammate of four years knew about it for half of the time that I knew him, worse still: he was using my money, my resources to look for the guy without ever thinking that hey, isn’t it a little bit weird to say the least? And then I had to wonder what his plan was if I had never found out? Continue to  ** _use_**  me so that his buddy can recover? Inviting him to live under  ** _my_**  roof? I thought of all this in that moment. Mind you, I still asked and you tried to weasel your way out with a technicality. ‘I didn’t know it was him’, oh, so you still knew it wasn’t a mechanical issue with the car, uh? And so, I lost it.” Tony shrugged, “The simple answer: I don’t know if I was trying to kill Barnes or not. I wasn’t thinking of anything at all at the time. Did I have the intention of killing him? I don’t know. All I do know is that I really, desperately needed him to hurt, if that ended in his death, well… I did not consider that part. The jury decided that I wasn’t guilty of attempt murder because I was in the suit and my very good lawyer provided ample pictures and footages to corroborate the fact that if it was my intention, if I wanted to, I could turn the whole Winter Core into ashes.

Steve’s tongue seemed too heavy to properly talk but Tony wasn’t finished yet. The billionaire looked even more amused, “All the times we fought together and yet it wasn’t until I was put in the same amount of difficulty as you that you realized how much fire power I have in my disposition? If I wanted to, if it  ** _was_**  indeed my intention to kill both of you, purposefully aiming for the vitals like you so stubbornly insist I was? Do you know what I would have done? Fly outside and turned the whole building into a crater with you both  ** _inside_**.”

The businessman got up and fixed his tie with an elegant movement before sending one last amused look towards the frozen super soldier, “Aren’t you happy that I don’t know if I was or wasn’t trying to kill Barnes?”

**Author's Note:**

> Robert Downey Jr.'s personal trainer for Iron Man stunts said in an interview that 'The trick for a Captain America vs Iron Man fight is Iron Man doing the least effort necessary to win.'
> 
> The directors say that Tony _was_ trying to kill Bucky...
> 
> What we are TOLD is not what we are shown... so...


End file.
